Boy does this go against traditional marketing ideas! But let’s face it, these reasons will wake you up to the reality of changing marketing trends and the dangers of staying with ‘what works’ for too long.
4 reasons why email marketing for the music industry is failing us.
Reason one, you give us a spam email. “Get on my newsletter. Give me your email.” “Download this for free. Give me your email.” Buy something from me. Give me your email.”
You are bombarded with so many ads that you have no where to hide. We all have that secondary Gmail account for the newsletters, freebies or surveys that you don’t ever check. That inbox is full of 12,313 unread emails waiting for you.
Two. Email providers are working against us. Let’s not forget about email filters. All of the major providers now filter emails like newsletters or promotional campaigns into tabs outside of your normal inbox. Not just a spam tab anymore, now there is a social tab, promotions tab and more. How often to you get all excited to check what you missed in your spam box? Never.
Three. You don’t have an attention span. Even if you gave me your actual email address, even if we engage enough to whitelist my email into your actual real inbox – what are the odds that you are going to actually click and open that email? The industry average is 12% open rates. If I send 1000 emails, 120 people will open it. That’s it. After spending time and money building an email list to 1000 people, every blast gives me 120 people who actually want to open it.
... and Four. You forgot how to click. Did you know the music industry average on clicks is 1.9%. Taking the above scenario – out of my 1000 sent emails and 120 people that opened it, less than 2% will click on a link that I really want you to click on. “Please check out my music”, “find out more about my event”, “read on about a great marketing idea I have for you” – but 2.4 clicks later and I’ve done quite a bit of work to get zero action.
Ok so I’ve bashed email long enough. Is it still worth gathering emails? If your audience is still receptive to your content, then of course. Everywhere you can make connections and get attention is important. I have build a great email following. My email open rates are over 30% (compared to 12%) and click through rates at 15-20% (compared to 1.9%) because I have carefully used social media ads to build and nurture that following. But do I use email marketing as my number one marketing tool? Hell no.
Social marketing has quickly come up and surpassed all other mediums as my personal number one avenue to connect, engage and nurture relationships. By a huge margin.
Retargeting my followers and strategically taking them on a content marketing story is absolutely crushing it when selling music brands and event tickets. Retargeting increases attention to a brand by major strides. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger has an open rate of 98% and its usage is growing at higher rates than the other native platforms. You cannot ignore what’s working.
Take a second and third look at what you are doing on social media, organically and through ad buying. You need to have a true 2017 strategy in place for the music and event industry. Take your time creating a strategy and blueprint, give yourself ample marketing time and pay attention to the data.
@louielavella